Treehugging: You’re Doing It Wrong
I saw this faucet in a local mall in Vancouver, and it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t a joke. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you: What you’re seeing is a solar-powered electronic faucet, complete with a handy informative plaque:
By installing this electronic faucet, this facility is demonstrating its commitment to water conservation and protecting/preserving our environment.
The mind boggles. Apparently, conserving water requires electricity and someone figured that adding a solar panel to the device would turn the conservation-cred of this faucet up to eleven.
It’s almost comical. For one thing, a solar-powered faucet can’t be solar-powered when it’s indoors – solar implies the light source is the sun, but in this case the light source is the fluorescent lights.
But really, focusing on the idiocy of an indoor solar-powered faucet overlooks the biggest problem: a faucet that requires electricity to run in the first place. The primary touted benefit of an electronic faucet is its ability to conserve water – something which was already achievable with spring-powered faucets. So, if it was already achievable without electricity, what’s the point of this thing?
The answer lies in the secondary benefit: touch-less operation. While I doubt there’s a high risk of contamination from a faucet in a bathroom, I suppose there can be a case made that it reduces costs to keep the faucet clean. There is, however, an alternative solution: a pedal-based faucet. We saw these in France, and I thought they were brilliant: no power, water-conserving, touch-less operation (I don’t think the bottom of your shoes are at any increased risk of contamination).
It the greenwashing by companies like Sloan, the manufacturer of this device, that fuel resistance to attempts to fight climate change and reduce our impact on the environment. Critics view these devices as a cynical attempt by companies to make a buck – surely the whole environmentalism thing is trick to make us buy different stuff!
Seriously Sloan, knock it off.
Good analysis, Brendon.
Really? That’s your take on this product? I work for Sloan and obviously disagree with your opinion. Foot pedal faucets are great. We’ve had them in the US for decades. They are very expensive and not always practical. You have it wrong. The primary purpose of a touch-free faucet is hygene. Faucet handles and push buttons are classic points of cross contamination. The use of this photo cell is to extend battery life. It’s a simple and effective way to do so. Sensor faucets can save water, so the environmental claims are valid. You should take more care before you say such things as greenwashing. You have a right to your opinion, but in this case you’ve bashed a good product and a good company.
@Jim: Sorry, but you’ve failed to respond to the specific criticisms of the design: that’s it’s unnecessary to use electricity to power a faucet in the first place, and that there are valid, simpler alternative means to achieve the goals (hygiene, water-conservation).
Foot pedals are expensive? How expensive? The Sloan faucet costs between $400 and $600, versus $150 to $300 for a foot pedal-based faucet (based on a quick web search). How do you account for the delta in claiming foot pedals are “very expensive”. And in what situations aren’t they practical?
Cross contamination is an issue? How much of an issue? I’d venture a guess that there’s more bacteria on most people’s keyboards than on bathroom faucets.
I’m not saying the claims can’t be rationalized – it’s a good story, it hangs together well, and I appreciate the marketing mind that came up with the story. But it simply doesn’t reflect reality. You’re using electricity to solve a problem that doesn’t require electricity to solve, and then attempting to portray it as “environmental” because you stuck a solar panel on it.
Brendon,
I’ve read your impressive resume, so I’m going to attempt to clarify the issue and appeal to the more analytical, scientific side of your mind.
First of all, the science on the subject, which is abundant if you really wished to do the research, is overwhelming and would cause you not to want to touch anything in a public bathroom – especially faucet handles.
Faucet handles are simply dirty things. You correctly identified another dirty device, your computer keyboard. The difference is one is found in a public restroom and has other peoples sneezes and mess on it, other than just your own. A quick little read on the subject can be viewed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11114617
So if you accept that they are at the very least, unclean, then we’ve established the need to activate them without touching with your hands. Fact is, we make knee activated faucets. We’re a 103 year family owned company, and over that time we’ve offered a variety of products which solve the problem. In the 70’s we pioneered the use of infra red sensors to control a faucet – again, trying to solve the primary problem of hygiene.
in the ensuing years, we’ve developed a wide range of hands free products, some sensor product can be found for as little as $55.00. when it comes to foot Pedal faucet controls, you get what you pay for. For a good one, you’re looking at $300. But you’re cost don’t just stop there, they are challenge to installed – even for a skilled plumber. They suffer a lot of abuse while being used. They are a challenge to maintain.
Even if you don’t accept that response, you’ll have to accept this: Consider you’re in a wheel chair, foot pedals simply won’t work. Here in the United States of American, we have the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA). So for all practical purposes, they are illegal in most applications.
Today’s sensor faucets can run for years on AA batteries. They are super low voltage devices. Using a fraction of the energy of a 40 watt light bulb. We make both battery and hardwire versions. The latter is superior because it eliminates the need for a battery all together – and uses negligible energy to operate. Obviously there are alternatives. An alternative to using a vacuum is a broom. But in this case, the market needs are simply not met with a manual faucet.
This faucet also uses less water then older faucets (.5 gpm vs. 2.0 gpm) and the auto control helps to conserve water as well. Savings which can add up. The Photo Cell is merely taking advantage of the potential energy that exists in the application. It extends the battery life so you only need to do a battery change roughly once a decade. It’s really quite a feat of engineering. And its real. Is a foot pedal more energy efficient – of course but again, doesn’t meet the market need.
I happened on your blog and I have taken far too much of my time responding to your ridiculous post. Sloan is a 100 year old family business. We don’t just sit back and make environmental claims like some do. We believe we can make a meaningful difference – and not just on the product side. We have a solar array on our building, and two wind turbines helping to reduce our energy consumption. We were awarded a Green Power Partnership award from the US EPA for our energy efforts. We have pioneered greywater systems and dozens of other water efficient technologies. We are continually looking at ways we can reduce our impact and help our customers achieve their goals. We have a strong focus on the environment, on our employees, and our community. We compete with offshore Chinese made product with products made here in the United States.
You have questioned our integrity as a manufacture. You have offended me personally. The accusation of greenwashing is very serious. You may think a product is silly or you may not agree with an execution of a certain technology, but to flippantly claim something is greenwashing is unprincipled. Judging from your resume, you seem like a young man with great potential, keep one thing in mind, while you have this blog as a venue to freely express yourself, you will forever live with its content.
It should be pointed out that Jim is not merely an employee of Sloan, but in all likelihood (based on his email address) Jim Allen, Sloan’s President and CEO.
I agree that there is a need for hands-free operation of faucets, and that water conservation is a good thing. Sloan appears to have undertaken praise-worthy efforts to be an environmentally sustainable company. Unfortunately, that isn’t reflected in this product.
Yes, the design reduces water usage. But it requires batteries and circuitry to drive it – inputs rich in heavy metals, whose production requires enormous amounts of energy and water, and that are extremely difficult to recycle. I’m willing to bet that there are original faucets from early in Sloan’s history that are still in operation out there, requiring only a washer or a screw to repair – can the same be said of this design? Probably not. In fact, I’m willing to bet that when this faucet’s circuitry fails breaks, the entire circuit has to be replaced.
But those are all technical details.
The problem Sloan faces is one of perception. Any individual looking at this product asks themselves “Why does this faucet have a solar panel?” and then “Why does this faucet even require electricity at all?” They instinctively understand that you can’t replace a passive device with something that require powers, circuitry, and a solar panel and call it environmentally friendly. To the layperson, the claims of water-conservation appear less credible when the faucets malfunction and turn on at inappropriate times (possibly due to improper installation or calibration, not the device design itself), wasting water for no apparent reason.
An engineer is someone who figures out how to build something for a penny that others would build for a dollar. So, that’s what I’d challenge you and Sloan to build: a faucet that conserves water, enables operation that doesn’t involve touching the faucet with your hands, and doesn’t require electricity. Look at HydroSpike, an automatic plant watering system that requires no electricity; sure, they could have used motors, circuits, and batteries – but they didn’t. I challenge you to do the same.
Take this post for what it is: not a slur against your company and its goals, but a call for it to rise to the challenge and build a better product that truly reflects its espoused values.
Aw, pack it in, BW… I believe Jim has layethed the smacketh down but mostly due to his rather extreme domain knowledge, which none of us expects you to have. 🙂
It was you who applied the term solar-powered. The truth is these things are photovoltaic and can convert most forms of light energy to power at various efficiencies. In essence Jim’s faucet recycles energy spent for lighting purposes into usable power, which while “green” is actually just practicality since, to my limited knowledge, very few sinks are wired with Alternating Current.
In designing fixtures for public bathrooms Jim exists at the nexus of a set of considerations it probably never occurred to you (or me) to take into account — public health, civic building codes, maintenance economics, and buildout cost being among them. The fact that I see these faucets all over the place presumably attests to the fact that Sloan has it right for now.
The thing you should be objecting to is the self-righteous self-congratulating plaque, presumably not manufactured by Sloan, that attempts to bathe good business sense in a veneer of social responsibility.
What this faucet actually PROVES is that social responsibility can, at least as often as not, make good business sense. That’s good for us all.
I think it’s super-cool that Jim took way too much of his time to respond to your post. Awesome stuff, both of you.
@ian: A clever person solves a problem, a wise person avoids it in the first place.
They’ve taken a passive device that required no power to operate, and added the need for electricity, batteries, a solar panel, and circuitry. They’ve added components that exert a serious environment cost in their creation, that you can’t fix or recycle when they fail, and that in all likelihood require complete replacement.
When evaluated as a whole, I would argue that this is a solution that is less environmentally-friendly than its predecessor, despite its clear reduction in water usage.
I agree that it’s cool he responded – but he didn’t really hear the core concern: couldn’t this problem be solved without all that? Why is it that, for example, France uses foot pedals all over the place? How do they deal with providing accessible access? Is it a cultural issue? Are there alternatives to those? Are there space/building code constraints (as you point out)?
Instead he responded with a paper on how faucets are a source of cross-contamination – in intensive care units. Hardly the everyday scenario.
Agree that the Sloan solution makes business sense (lower installation costs, reduced water usage), but I don’t see it as social responsibility. It’s one-dimensional social responsibility, which is exactly the problem – solutions aren’t being designed with holistic considerations of the environmental costs of all the inputs. Given that Sloan has cradle-to-cradle certification for two of its flushometers, they clearly have the capacity to build solutions on that basis. I just don’t see it here.
Instead, as you point out, I see a company putting a sticker on a solution claiming it was built with concern for the environment, when its design clearly signals otherwise. It appears disingenuous.
France’s foot pedals make excellent shoe cleaners, too!
However it seems like simple common sense that the materials required for that kind of a solution are a solid multiple of the materials required in this faucet, and since they’re very mechanical are prone to breakdown and maintenance hassle. And when those levers and mechanics rust or break, they too are landfill.
Without months of study I doubt you could put together an accurate reckoning of what the real raw costs of each solution are — so I’m willing to hang with Jim’s experience and wisdom that his is “good enough” to acheive all of the design goals in balance for now, until something better emerges.
Photovoltaic cells are typically guaranteed by manufacturers for 25 years, but in practise have been known to remain efficient for 30-40 years. I doubt those foot pumps go that long without major maintenance.
Ian, the amount of materials isn’t the problem: it’s what goes into them. As I pointed out, Sloan has experience with cradle-to-cradle production of its (manual, non-automated) flushometers…the things on the back of toilets in public restrooms. That means all the materials are completely recoverable.
As for foot pedals – sure, I’ll concede that they probably break, or require more maintenance. Having people stomp on them all day can’t be good for them. The knee-activated versions are probably the same.
It just seems like there should be an alternative that you could push/activate with another part of your body (upper arm, elbow) that minimizes the risk of cross-contamination without requiring electronics and batteries. It’s worked for surgical faucets for years, surely there’s an alternative for consumer applications?
I think if you guys keep this up you just might develop our next line of faucets for us.
In the mean time, if you send me your addresses I’ll be happy to send you some Sloan schwag for you to either wear proudly or burn in effegy; either way, we appreciate the dialog.
My personal solution by the way, is to not get my hands dirty in the first place.
Cheers gents,
Graham Allen
(Yes, Jim’s brother)
Hey Graham,
Indeed – in fact, that’s a great idea! Why don’t you guys run a competition for engineering students?
Everyone’s building silly web applications, when anyone with an appreciation for history knows that without water or sanitation technology, the modern world would implode. You could really spin a great story around it, get a fair amount of press, and maybe inspire some perspective.
No need for schwag, but I make the offer: if you want some of my time, gratis, to brainstorm how you could make this happen, I’m happy to help.
It is likely the PV solution costs about the same compared to a battery/wired solution. If they can make the expected time to failure of the electronics significantly longer than the plumbing, it isn’t such a crazy idea.
Assuming the above comments are from who you claim, I don’t think the defensive tone of Sloan is productive. Having some exposure to public relations, I would suggest a more measured tone in the future.
Sloan 1, Brendon 0
Jim’s response tone was both measured and passionate, and was justified. Conjecture does not qualify as analysis, and in this case was wrong, to boot. I work in the solar industry and see many uninformed claims masquerading as fact made by bloggers. I find that software professionals, especially, lack understanding of construction and physical products, thinking that they are as easy to fix as software logic. You would do well to stick to blogging about your areas of expertise, since you are obviously very good at that.
Respectfully,
Matt
Again, Jim’s response is one-dimensional. Focusing on water conservation ignores all of the other inputs and outputs of the solution.
It’s not conjecture: the solution’s components contain large amounts of heavy metals, require large qualities of water to produce, and are difficult to recycle. A regular faucet is mostly metal, which is easy to recycle at a fraction of its original extraction cost in both dollars and energy expenditure.
I might also point out that my background is electrical engineering. In fact, I’ve actually built integrated circuits, from the silicon up, in a clean room at my university.